Nuoro, Cathedral of Santa Maria della Neve

Nuoro is a center of ancient origin but of recent urban formation. The cathedral is in the center, on the hill that the people of Nuoro call “sa tanchitta”, separated from the historic districts of Seuna and San Pietro.
The cathedral of Santa Maria della Neve is located on the site of an ancient church that Bishop Giovanni Maria Bua decided to rebuild, blessing the first stone in 1835.
Numerous events slowed down the work: in 1840 the designer Fra Antonio Cano died, falling from a scaffolding set up in the factory; after a short time Bua also died. Only in 1846 was the work resumed under the direction of Vittorio Fogu from Sassari, the same one who ten years earlier had completed the construction of the transept chapels in the cathedral of Oristano. In 1853, Monsignor Zunnui-Casula was able to bless the new cathedral.
The building, majestic, dominates a vast square. The tympanated façade has two twin bell towers on the sides. The façade is marked by four monumental granite columns surmounted by ionic capitals that support a very simple entablature and ends with a triangular tympanum that recalls Palladian suggestions, so dear to the designer Antonio Cano.
The outer sides are characterized by the sinuous design of the apses of the side chapels, with clear Borrominian references.
The interior has a single covered barrel-vaulted aisle with large windows through which good light enters, which creates chiar-dark effects typical of the Cano. Three chapels on each side, apsed and covered with small hemispherical vaults, communicate with each other through arches. In this way, three naves are created and a cross-shaped plan is traced, although there is no cruise with its dome. The entablature accentuates the chiaroscural effects.
The presbytery, elevated, is characterized by a structure in which rigorous geometries dominate, with an alternation of white marble and polychrome mirrors combined with golden festoons.

History of studies
The church is the subject of a brief summary in Salvatore Naitza's volume on late seventeenth-century and purist architecture (1992).

Bibliography by
C. Maltese-R. Serra, “Episodes of an Anticlassical Civilization”, in Sardinia, Venice, 1969;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the Late 17th Century to Purist Classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 78;
Consulta Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage. Itineraries of Faith in the Land of Nuoro, Nuoro, 2000.